“You okay in here?” she asked, glancing at the mess I’d made searching for my new underwear.
“Yeah, fine,” I tossed over my shoulder. Mercury took a seat at the end of my bed, eating a bowl of cereal. I glanced at the corner of my room. “Where is my dress?” I asked her.
“What?” she asked, her mouth full of homemade granola.
“My dress! My dress! It was right here!” I said, pointing at the old chair I kept in the corner of my room where I’d laid out my outfit for graduation.
“I didn’t see any dress there earlier.”
“What?”
“There wasn’t a dress there when I came in this morning.”
“A dress just doesn’t get up and walk away, Mercury!”
We both stared at one another, eyes wide. Mercury set her bowl on my dresser as I put my robe back on.
“Mom!” I yelled, climbing down the metal winding staircase that led to Mercury’s and my rooms. “Mom!”
“What?” she asked, walking into the kitchen from outside. She wiped dirt-smeared hands onto her gardening apron.
“Mom, there was a dress on the chair in my room. I set it out last night,” I said evenly, hoping she didn’t do what Mercury and I were both sure she probably did do.
“Oh that?” she asked, dismissing it with a hand. “It looked like something a lady of the evening would wear, so I donated it to the Salvation Army.”
“Hooker, Mom. You mean hooker,” Mercury chimed in. Mom chided her with an irritated look.
“That was Frankie’s dress!” I yelled, losing control of myself, my arms extended and palms up in exasperation.
“That explains it then,” she added, humming to herself as she washed the dirt off her hands.
I fell into a kitchen chair, my hand going to my head. “Why do you always do this?” I asked her.
“Do what?” she asked, seemingly unaware of what she’d done.
Mercury sighed. “Mom, didn’t you think it kind of a coincidence that Jupiter had a dress laid out on the chair she always lays her clothes out on, the night before graduation?”
Mom looked thoughtful for a moment. “Oh, dear,” she said, realization dawning on her. “I’m so sorry, honey,” she soothed, coming to my side. She leaned down. “Listen, I have this old dress I used to wear back in high school tucked into the back of my closet. It’s amazing. It’s all these shades of brown and the collar turns up—”
“Mom,” I interrupted, “I’m not wearing that.” She stood up, a hurt look on her face. My heart softened. “Mom, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it. I’ll find something else.”
Mercury and I trudged back up the stairs and she helped me fish a few pieces out of my closet that were somewhat decent enough for a graduation ceremony.
“I guess I’m going eclectic,” I said, staring down at the hodgepodge worth of pieces on my bed.
“Yeah, that’s what this is. Eclectic.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Thank God for the graduation gown.”
I threw on a bright blue floral-print pencil skirt that had hints of hot pink in it, tossed on a nude spaghetti strap camisole and a sheer pink blouse over that, and tucked both into the long band of the skirt.
“Here,” Mercury said, rummaging through the hooks over my bed that held all my jewelry. She unhooked a large, chunky gold necklace and placed it around my neck. I sat at the edge of my bed and put my heels on. Mercury tore the towel off my head, her mouth screwed into disapproval.
“What?”
“You look like a drowned cat,” she said.
“Oh nice! Thank you for that.”
She laughed. “I’m sorry but it’s true.”
The doorbell rang and I stood, resigned to my fate. I teetered down the metal staircase in my heels with my graduation gown and cap in hand and answered it.
“Ready to—” Frankie began but stopped when I opened the door. “What the hell, Jupiter? What are you wearing? Why is your hair wet? What happened to all our careful planning?”
“I forgot to charge my phone last night and woke late.”
“But where’s the dress?”
“My mom. I owe you one dress.”
Frankie nodded her head in her usual resignation when it came to my mom. “I see. Come on then,” she said, walking toward her jeep.
I swept the door closed with a kiss on Mercury’s cheek and a promise to see her at the ceremony later.
“Does it really look that bad?” I asked.
“The outfit’s cool, like Gwen meets Marilyn, but your hair, dude,” she said, rummaging through her hobo bag. Her own long blonde hair fell across her shoulders as she dug deeper. “Where is it?” she asked absently. She pulled a brush out and tossed it onto my lap. “Clean ya’self up.”
I started at the ends to get the tangles out. “What’s the point anyway? It’s just going to get all messed up on the drive.”
“I got you.” Frankie laughed. “Sorry, didn’t have time to put the top up.” She pulled a scarf out of her bag and handed it to me. She pulled one out for herself and tied it around her head to protect her hair.
“Thanks, but I think I’ll let it dry in the wind.”
“S’your funeral,” she said, backing out of my driveway like it was turning to quicksand.
“Jesus, Frankie! You drive like you’re on fire!”
“Didn’t you know?” she asked, throwing the jeep into drive. “I am on fi-ya!”
She peeled out on my street, our laughter singing in the wind behind us as we headed out toward Overseas Highway.
Endicott Academy was only about twenty minutes away from my neighborhood in Key Largo, but the graduation ceremony was being held at the small convention center on Thatch Island, which had the most incredible natural beaches, a rarity near the Keys. As Frankie’s jeep crested the edge of the island, I was struck with a sense of finality. The reflection shimmered off the surface of the crystal clear water and white sand beaches.
“I can’t believe I’m moving to Washington,” I said quietly.
Frankie peered my direction before placing her hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay, Jup. You’ll be back for the summer next year before you know it.”
I smiled at her. “And until then, we’ll live it up.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
We pulled in to Leighton Amphitheater, our car stalled behind a line of our fellow classmates. Several boys had gotten out of their cars to peruse the passengers behind them, including a very tasty-looking Jason Packard.
“Oh ma gawd, look at Jason,” Frankie whispered. She leaned out of her door and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Jason Packard, get back in your vehicle! You are hindering the line’s progress. I repeat, return to your vehicle!” Frankie yelled in monotone.
Jason, of course, turned around and sauntered our direction.
“That boy is too fine for his own good,” Frankie said under her breath to me as she checked her lipstick and removed her headscarf, making me laugh.
“Well, hello there, Frank’n’beans. Looking good,” he said, his eyes crawling the length of her legs.
“Check your hormones, meathead,” she said, making Jason guffaw. Actually guffaw, which I didn’t really believe could happen in real life, despite all the times I’d read books that used the insipid word. There’s another word that doesn’t belong in a book. Insipid. So ersatz. Okay, I’ll stop now.
“You like my hormones,” Jason teased, edging closer to Frank’s face. She swallowed. “A lot,” he continued. “I’d say you’d do anything for my hormones.”
I fought a smile, biting my lip, and looked out the windshield. My mouth opened in disbelief. Ezra Brandon was two car lengths ahead of us, his ’65 black GTO turned perpendicular with ours as he was following the line into the parking lot, and he was looking directly at me. Nay, he was staring directly at me. He’d noticed I saw him, yet he didn’t look away. His penetrating stare did things to my insides, heating me up all over, and making me feel like I was t
umbling over and over myself, spinning out of control. Blood rushed to my head and I felt dizzy for a moment, my heart pounding in my chest. I looked away quickly, my hands smoothing my skirt as I attempted to gain control of my breathing. His stare still laid heavily on my face and shoulders and chest. I glanced back up. He was still gazing at me, his eyes squinted almost imperceptibly but I noticed, and I wondered what he was thinking, wondered why he was taking me in, wondered what he was memorizing so acutely.
My brows furrowed, my mouth opened slightly in confusion, and in question, but he didn’t answer. He had nothing to say. Instead, he shifted in his seat to face the lot again.
I breathed deeply, caught off guard by his gaze, but also because his stare felt sharp, intruding, and I wanted to know what it meant, why he did it, but mostly I needed to forget how it’d made me feel, how it seemingly altered me from the inside, raising the temperature of not just my body but also scorched my heart, because it felt as if he’d branded me with that stare, and I belonged to no one but myself.
I looked out onto the amphitheater, anxious to get inside and leave behind my strange moment with Ezra Brandon, when I caught a glimpse of myself in the side-view mirror.
“Frankie!” I gasped, startling both her and Jason.
“What?” they yelled.
My eyes began to sting. “My hair,” I whined.
The wind had indeed dried my hair, but it had also twined it in that unforgiving manner wind seemed to bestow on God’s most awkward creatures, namely me. You see, if Frankie had let the wind blow through her hair, she would have defined the phrase “windswept,” but not me. No, not me. The wind offered me no such favor.
“I look like I stuck my finger in a light socket!” I complained, a few tears sprang free of their own volition.
“It’s okay,” Frankie assuaged, trying to smooth down the sides, but her face betrayed her words. Her hands lifted from my hair. “It keeps springing back up,” she said, fascinated by the mechanics of my insane hair.
“Now I know why he was staring,” I mentioned absently. “I look like eighties Sarah Jessica Parker!”
“Who was staring?” she asked.
“No one,” I answered and sighed.
Frankie pulled into a parking spot and we hopped out of the car. There was nothing I could do. It was sort of my luck that on the last day I would see all my classmates I resembled Cousin Itt.
“I can braid it,” Frankie offered, gathering all my hair that fell at my waist and twisting it around her palm.
“It’s too late now. We’re needed at the practice. Maybe after that but before the ceremony?”
“Sure, babe,” she said.
After we parked, we all congregated at the front of the amphitheater waiting for the principal to call us up in sections according to the first letter of our last names.
“You’re lucky you’re in the C’s,” Frankie observed. “Such a pain in the ass that my last name is Zajkowski. Now I’m going to have to stand in these horrendous heels for half an hour while they get everyone situated.”
“Sorry, Frankenstein,” I said, bumping my hip with hers.
“It’s okay,” she answered, smiling, and bumping me back.
Good ol’ Frankie. She was never bummed for long.
“Okay, B’s and C’s!” the principal called out.
“Bye, buttercup.”
“Bye, jelly bean.”
“Yo, Jupiter, what’s up with your hair, man?” Jose Vasquez commented.
I shot him a dirty look. “Oh yeah? Well… What’s… What’s up with your face, Vasquez?”
“You got that?” he teased.
He and a few other boys started snickering, painting my face red. Kill me now.
“Mister Brandon?” I heard the principal call out.
“Here,” Ezra answered quietly.
“Take a seat here, son.”
Ezra did as he was told and sat. He glanced around him and his gaze fell on me, an emotion flitted across his face, but it was gone before I could decipher it. He looked away and then my stomach clenched. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. My last name was Corey. Okay, so it was Brandon and then Carrington. Wait, Molly Carrington moved away last year.
Oh.
Shit.
“Miss Corey?” the principal asked.
My hand self-consciously went to my hair. I kept pulling the length through my hands over and over. “Yes, sir,” I croaked, before clearing my throat. “Yes, sir,” I said clearly.
“Sex with Ezra, please.”
My head whipped up. “What?” I asked, appalled.
“Next to Ezra, please.”
I giggled nervously, earning me a strange look from Principal Harris. “Yes, sir.”
I started walking toward the seat next to Ezra’s but made the mistake of looking over at Frankie. My face flashed a million shades of red as she opened her mouth, her tongue sticking out at the corner, her brows close, her nose scrunched, all in an annoying attempt to tease me. I waved at her to stop, but it only spurred her on more as she started to spank the air in front of her like an imbecile. I’m going to kill you, Frank. I peered over at Ezra but his head was down, his hair falling forward over his face.
I sat down next to him, wrapping my arms around myself and shoving my knees away from him as far as I could get them in an attempt to make myself smaller. My hands went to my blonde, frizzy hair and I started to attempt to smooth it down over and over again, running my fingers throughout in a futile attempt to tame it.
Ezra’s head lifted abruptly and a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, but he refused to look at me, facing the front of the amphitheater instead. Yes, kill me now.
Chapter Four
After the practice session, Frankie and I sat at the steps leading to the amphitheater’s stage while she intricately plaited my hair into a Dutch braid, but she pulled at the loops of the braid to give it fullness and a deconstructed feel. She wrapped the braid at the side of my nape and stabbed two chopsticks we found in her glove compartment into it to keep it from falling. When she was done, we went to the bathroom to relieve ourselves and for me to examine her handiwork.
“Damn, Smalls, you did good,” I complimented her, examining my braid-hawk in the bathroom mirror as we washed our hands.
“Thanks, Wendy Peffercorn. You look scorching.”
I dipped my shoulder in feigned sexiness. “Thank you, baby.”
We stepped back and examined ourselves. Bittersweet emotion filled me.
“This day is going to radically change the way we’re used to living.”
Frankie sighed. “I know.”
She held her hand out to me and I took it, squeezing it briefly, before dropping it as we headed toward the parking lot to meet our awaiting classmates. We all watched in anxious anticipation as our friends and family filed in to take their seats, waiting to join us in celebration. At noon, they lined us up as we’d practiced and we proceeded to our awaiting chairs serenaded by the incredibly cheesy, yet incredibly emotional, “Pomp and Circumstance.”
Ezra Brandon walked ahead of me, his intriguing scent of oakmoss, sandalwood, and other spices I couldn’t name, assailed me. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, memorizing that smell, knowing even though we were going to the same school I’d probably never see him again. As he walked, his right shoulder dipped slightly from the small limp he’d developed after “the change.”
Junior year was the best of Ezra Brandon’s life. Everyone knew it. Captain of the lacrosse team, homecoming prince, and dating Jessica West, head cheerleader at Endicott. It was nauseatingly cliché. He was the most popular guy of our class and had been that way all his life. He had a myriad of friends but wasn’t a snob by any means. He hung out with everyone. He was a social bridge of sorts, comfortable and accepted in every social group.
But this all changed when he totaled his truck over Christmas break our junior year. Ezra woke from a three-day coma to discover he’d shattered both his legs. Lucky to have even survive
d, he spent a grueling year rebuilding and working through physical therapy. The hard, painful work made Ezra bitter, and he sank into himself almost immediately.
He wasn’t thankful for being alive because it meant he’d never be able to compete again. In losing his ability to play, he’d lost his identity. Jessica broke up with him because he’d stopped calling her, or so she said. Friends abandoned him because he refused to answer his door or talk to them in class. It was a turning point for Ezra. He’d had previous outspoken plans to attend Syracuse in the fall after his senior year on a lacrosse scholarship, but those dreams were replaced with three hours a day in a therapy pool. He was forced to rethink his life, and his new plans made him bitter and angry and very alone.
But I knew him. He was callused, yes, but I knew deep down he was still the same guy we’d all grown up with.
He was Ezra.
We sat down in our graduation gowns and caps. I smiled to myself. If I look as ridiculous as I feel right now, I must look like an idiot. I kept smiling, though. I didn’t care. I was beginning adulthood. It was scary and it was unknown, but it was the beginning of it all and that was a thrilling prospect. The sky was the limit for me and I relished the possibilities.
“What’s so funny?” a deep, silky voice asked, startling me.
I stole a glimpse of Ezra from the corner of my eye. “Me?” I asked.
He laughed quietly, shocking me. “Yeah, you.”
“Nothing,” I lied.
“Sure,” he replied, not believing me.
He turned his body more toward me and smiled, shaking his head a little.
I swallowed hard. Ezra Brandon thought I was amusing? My heart raced in my chest.
He leaned in. “I liked it better before,” he said softly, bewildering me.
“Huh?”
“Your hair. I liked it better before.”
I gulped, afraid to reply for fear he’d vanish into thin air.
After a few moments, I said, “I looked like a rejected cast member from Hairspray.”
He laughed, genuinely laughed, shocking me further. I stared at him like he was a wild animal about to spook.